Did space lasers cause Hawaii wildfires? The many conspiracies debunked

The people of Hawaii are still counting their dead, their homes have been homes destroyed, and thousands of acres of land have been reduced to ash. But already a raft of conspiracy theories have sprung up surrounding the blaze. Let’s take a look at the looniest claims surrounding the blaze: Oprah and other elites’ ‘land grab’ Some on social media have blamed Oprah Winfrey and other elites for the wildfires. The conspiracy claims that Oprah, who purchased around 2,000 acres on Maui, is somehow behind the blaze – along with other rich and powerful property owners in Hawaii like Bill Gates. “Locals in Maui were refusing to sell their land to the elites,” one user claimed. “The part of the island mainly destroyed by the fires was prime area right next to lavish mega-mansions. Now, a lot of those locals are forced to sell their land and many tragically died in the flames.”

“Oprah Winfrey has a luxury mansion in Maui — it’s completely fine”, the user added.

“How did the fire know to avoid the most expensive mansions?” he wrote claiming that the homes of celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Will Smith, Jeff Bezos had also escaped damage. “Wake up!” Another poster claimed Oprah had been “buying up land in Maui like crazy”. “In the last few years she has gone from about 100 acres of land in Maui to over 1000 acres!” the user added. “Then all of a sudden out of nowhere a fire comes and destroys many homes near her but her land remains untouched!” Oprah, ironically, is currently in Maui helping out with relief efforts. It’s a little overwhelming,” Winfrey was quoted as saying by the BBC. “But I’m really so pleased to have so many people supporting and people are just bringing what they can and doing what they can.” Social media influencer Ed Krassenstein begged people not to push conspiracy theories online.

To all of the X users who are pushing a conspiracy theory that Oprah Winfrey is somehow responsible for the Maui, Hawaii wildfires because her estate didn’t burn down, just STOP!

There are literally close to 100 people declared dead. There are over 2200 structures damaged or… pic.twitter.com/PclbQBxy8e

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) August 14, 2023

“Oprah has literally been on the ground helping people,” he wrote. “She has been providing cots, pillows, toiletries, and more to shelters, like this one in Wailuku, Hawaii, where she can also be seen helping out. I get it. People don’t like Oprah’s politics. But to make up a conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence is both irresponsible and disgusting. You’re better than this.” Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez, meanwhile, have announced a $100m humanitarian relief fund for Hawaii. Space lasers Some users have also blamed space lasers or ‘energy weapons’ for the death and destruction that has been wrought on Hawaii. One post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, shared the photo of a distant blaze seemingly projecting a beam of light with the caption: “Maui Hawaii two nights ago, it was an attack!!!!!!!?

“Lahaina, Maui has been RAZED to the ground,” one post stated. “Only a Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) can cause this kind of destruction.”

“The Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) being used on Hawaii are powerful enough to set the Pacific Ocean on fire,” the user added. “DEW” stands for directed-energy weapon. This technology uses “concentrated electromagnetic energy,” according to the US Government Accountability Office. That includes “high energy lasers and other high-power electromagnetics.” But the laser beam in the video being shared online was edited into the footage. It does not appear in an unedited version posted on YouTube in August 2014 by Russian media outlet RIA Dagestan. The fire and resulting explosion, however, do materialize. The outlet reported that the incident occurred on Aug. 8, 2014, in Makhachkala, a southwestern Russian city that sits beside the Caspian Sea in the country’s Republic of Dagestan. [caption id=“attachment_12982312” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Fire and smoke fill the sky from wildfires on the intersection at Hokiokio Place and Lahaina Bypass in Maui, Hawaii.[/caption] Some of the posts include images purporting to show bright beams of light shooting from the sky. The claims echo conspiracy theories about previous disasters, such as Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s blaming of laser beams from space for a 2018 wildfire in California. Reporter Ben Collins noted that such claims were “a good example of how conspiracy culture cannot and should not be reasoned with”.

The Maui fires are a good example of how conspiracy culture cannot and should not be reasoned with. There will be no come-to-Jesus moment on climate change or severe weather. There will just be more people claiming Oprah or Biden used a direct energy weapon. That's our future.

— follow @bencollins on bluesky (@oneunderscore__) August 14, 2023

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“There will be no come-to-Jesus moment on climate change or severe weather,” he wrote. “There will just be more people claiming Oprah or Biden used a direct energy weapon. That’s our future.” “You either have to fight this stuff as reporters and come down hard on the side of facts or live in a world where we’re 50-50’ing science with the Jewish Space Laser crew. It seems like most news orgs are very comfortable folding the second part into horse race election coverage,” Collins added. “Obviously these are really crazy allegations,” said Michael Gollner, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley who researches fire dynamics. Once confined to fringe circles, conspiracy theories about lasers have picked up steam online since the California wildfires of the 2010s, according to Mike Rothschild, an expert on the QAnon movement and author of the book “Jewish Space Lasers.” “It works on the lack of basic understanding that conspiracy believers have of how fire and wind work,” Rothschild said. “The theory is especially adaptable to social media because it fits with pictures taken of fires that show beams of light supposedly coming from space.” Susan Buchanan, director of public affairs for the National Weather Servic said the agency alerted local officials up to a week in advance “about dangerous fire weather conditions on the Hawaiian Islands,” issuing official warnings in the days before the inferno began One photo social media users are claiming shows a laser directed at Maui actually dates to at least 2018, reverse image searches show. Snopes, another fact-checking outlet, reported at the time that the photo likely showed light from a controlled burn at an Ohio oil refinery. Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told said he does not believe the edited video shows “any kind of laser” and that the impact of a directed-energy weapon wouldn’t actually appear as a visible laser beam. “Modern lasers with power that is high enough to start any kind of fire operate in the infrared and so cannot be seen by the naked eye,” he said. Boyd, the expert on directed energy weapons, said the image could not possibly show a high-energy laser fired from the sky. “First, modern high-energy lasers used for weapons operate at a wavelength in the infrared that cannot be seen with the naked eye,” Boyd said of the picture. “Second, to produce the effects that are seen on the ground would require an incredibly high power laser that could not be flown in the air or operated in space.” Another photo misrepresented online was featured in a 2018 article saying it showed a SpaceX rocket launch. “It’s easy to use those pictures as ‘proof’ of what ’they’ are doing to us to further their climate change agenda or societal control, and people desperate for answers would rather believe in space weapons than the reality of the climate crisis,” Rothschild said. Trees left standing Some have claimed that trees being left standing in the aftermath of the wildfires are a tell-tale sign of foul play. “The powers to be are at work again. This was no wildfire,” a voiceover on one Facebook video states, showing photos of Maui wreckage. [caption id=“attachment_12989942” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Charred vehicles are seen on the streets after wildfires devastated the historic town of Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, US. Reuters[/caption] “A wildfire that demolishes buildings, leaving trees standing, leaving restaurant umbrellas and trees untouched – yet having the power to destroy a boat in the middle of the ocean … What we are seeing here is definitely no wildfire. Wildfires do not completely burn out vehicles, glass and all, yet leaving nearby trees and utility poles still standing upright.”

But experts say it is not unusual to see such damage after a wildfire.

Dr Rory Hadden, a senior lecturer and expert in fire investigations at the University of Edinburgh, told BBC trees are left standing because blazes “burning through a large piece of wood takes a long time”, “thick pieces of wood are usually not able to sustain burning on their own” and “the high moisture content of trees will also make them hard to burn”. “It’s actually very common that wildfires will burn out structures and vehicles but leave surrounding trees, utility poles, and other vegetation unscathed,” said Michael Gollner, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who leads a fire research lab. Wildfires are often spread to homes and other structures via embers — small, burning particles that break from vegetation or structures, Gollner added. He pointed to a 2008 federal report about a fire in Lake Arrowhead, California, that found that a wildfire initially showered a neighborhood with fiery debris, igniting several homes and vegetation. But it was the subsequent spread between houses that accounted for most of the residential damage, the report said, not the wildfire itself engulfing homes. Photos in the report show homes destroyed amid trees that remain standing. Christopher Dunn, an Oregon State University assistant professor of wildfire risk science, offered a similar assessment of the Maui visuals showing trees and poles still standing amid fire-ravaged landscape: “No, that’s not unusual.” Dunn provided photos from a 2020 fire in southern Oregon in which homes were destroyed while neighboring trees remained upright, despite some charring. While small pieces of wood burn easily, the sheer size of large trees, some protection from their bark and the water they contain make it so they don’t simply vaporize during a fire, he said — which explains the fact that some salvage trees for lumber after a forest fire. Likewise, Arnaud Trouvé, a professor of fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland, said fires can spread through flame contact, radiation or the flying embers, also known as “firebrands.” “A fire that spreads through flame contact and/or radiation will typically attack all fuel sources on its path. Under those conditions, you would not expect to find unburnt trees,” he said in an email. “But fire spread in the wildland urban interface (WUI) has been shown to be often controlled by firebrands. Under those conditions, you can find patches of unburnt vegetation and structures. This has been observed in previous WUI fires on the West Coast of the US.” He added that structures, decks and fences are susceptible to accumulating flying embers, making them particularly vulnerable — whereas the wind may blow such embers past trees and poles. Smart city “Hawaii fires were set to land grab," read one text on a recent video published on Facebook.

The TikTok creator behind the video claimed the blazes were intentionally set to “try and get people into 15-minute cities.”

“Hawaii is very small, it has a small amount of land available – especially for millionaires and billionaires that have houses in these areas that want to keep building,” she says in the video. “So, the easiest way instead of offering people money for their homes is to just burn the entire place down and pretty much just burn people out of their area.” In a video that spread widely on Instagram, another user said footage of the damage in Hawaii “sure doesn’t look like a fire” but rather “like something almost exploded.” He added that media reports failed to note that in January “they had in Maui a smart city conference to turn Maui into an entire smart island – changing everything to electric, renewables, solar panels and pushing everybody into electric vehicles. 15-minute smart cities.” But while authorities have not pinpointed what exactly set Maui ablaze, there is no evidence the fires were set intentionally to redesign the island to be more walkable or climate friendly. “In the US, 90 percent of the fires are human-caused – but intentionally as arson and everything, it’s not that many,” said Albert Simeoni, professor and head of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). “People always come with that because it’s an especially unthinkable disaster … and they want somebody to blame.” With inputs from agencies